“the fascination of what’s difficult”

January 07, 2007

Sweet Like A Crow

For the most part I chose this poem because I found it to be an enjoyable read. It was a relatively simple read because it was very repetitive. In it, Ondaatje is simply comparing an eight-year-old's voice to several other terrible sounds. As stated before, it is very repetitive because it is just one simile after another, over and over again. Some of the more creative comparisons include "a dolphin reciting epic poetry to a sleepy audience," "an angry family pushing a jeep out of the mud," and "pulling barbed wire across a stone courtyard." Nevertheless, after all of these, perhaps the most important one is the final comparison. I could be wrong but it seems that the purpose of the poem lies here. It appears as if he could be comparing it to the sound of his own children. Therefore, accepting that while it can be seen as incessantly annoying, to an extent it can also be seen as beautiful.